Wrong issue that makes the right issue worse. And is also immoral, vast, extravagant expenditure

Dear Cllr Jackie Taylor

Wrong issue that makes the right issue worse.  And is also immoral, vast, extravagant expenditure.

Thanks for your acknowledgement e-mail of 30 November.  This time, here is my rebuttal, to the earlier e-mail, in blue .  Could you please ask the officer who penned the reply for you, if he or she would be so good as to rebut the rebuttal!

Sandwell believes that there is a need for continued and increased investment in both the rail and metro networks in the Black Country.  This sounds ever so reasonable.  However, investing in Metro trams is six to ten times more expensive per Km for the construction than simply returning the commuter, regional and intercity trains and stations to wasted railway lines in the Black Country and Brum.  In addition, the railway network has been used, bizarrely, to run housing and trading estates and roads down them, to such an extent that about 100 Kms has been lost for ever.  This, at a time when road congestion was increasing over 40 years and train overcrowding has become more marked over the last 25 years.  Some officers still advise members (especially in Dudley) that this policy of destruction of railway lines was just fine and dandy!  The choice between metro and heavy rail must be considered against the needs of individual corridors to achieve the largest benefits to the highest number of people and businesses using those corridors.  Cost benefit analysis would prove that best value for money comes from running commuter and regional trains on urban railway lines that have not yet been destroyed by council planning committees.  There is NO choice to consider, when remaining railway lines had been so successful for hundred years until we stopped using them in the 1950s and 60s.  A corridor with a track bed should be used for trains to slow the runaway greenhouse effect by helping modal shift from car to train.  Simply use railway lines for railway trains.  A revolutionary concept!

As I am sure you are aware, business cases for such schemes are developed in accordance with HM Treasury and Department for Transport guidance. The business cases always come up with whatever, the paymaster wants it to say.  He who pays the piper calls the tune.  This was the case for the first metro line, and I can assure you that this was also true for the business case for the Wednesbury to Brierley Hill scheme. The business case for the first Metro line destroyed Wolverhampton's second principal mainline station, Low Level; obliterated two or three Kms of double track railway line on either side; and, destroyed a quarter of the platform capacity at Snow Hill station.  We now have a poorer train service from Brum to Shrewsbury and, possibly, Crewe too.  TfWM’s business case was fully scrutinised by the relevant Government departments before the funding was awarded to the scheme.  This proves how incompetent these relevant Government departments are.  And this, when the civil servants knew that Network Rail had written that WBHE tram was to go on a "railway of national strategic significance", too.  How stupid and scandalous is that?!  

Following completion of the Wednesbury to Brierley Hill route, Sandwell will support work to bring forward further extensions to the route south linking to Stourbridge and north from Wednesbury to Walsall. This would lead to all of the Black Country’s main centres being linked to each other, and Birmingham, by high quality, low emission, public transport.  How very stupid to leave the Black Country gloriously isolated on our principal, mainline railway to Worcester to the SW and to Derby to the NE.  Isolated because the mainline railway is being turned into a shuttle tramline, with still three great gaps on the 120 Kms railway between Worcester and Derby.  A shuttle tramline on Dudley's mainline railway to Sandwell's at Dudley Port!  How foolish is that?

Sandwell Council firmly believes that this would have a greater value in reducing congestion on roads through Sandwell than a heavy rail service linking Worcester with Derby, given that it would not cater for journeys to West Bromwich, Wolverhampton or Birmingham which make up a high proportion of the trips in the area.  The best way to reduce congestion is to use the £449 BILLION (plus cost overruns) for WBHE to give everyone fareless, electric buses and not just free for old crocks like me.  Less than £200 million (2015 figure) to finish your forgotten, the half finished 56 Kms between Stourbridge and Burton on Trent.  And, this, with Railfuture's nine new stations, too.  And, it even gives a new railway line into Brum via Bescot into Snow Hill, if the new curve is built at Benson Road.

As you are aware, the metro scheme is designed to accommodate future use by heavy rail. This is very questionable.  You cannot have freight, commuter, regional and intercity trains on a principal mainline railway when two short sections have been given over to six to ten trams every hour from 0600 hrs to 2300 hrs.  The tram train is still a tram and is unsuitable for a principal, mainline railway.  As you know, the Council has little influence on Network Rail’s planning for freight services and at present, there is insufficient demand in this corridor to justify passenger rail. Complete rubbish.  Funny that it justifies passenger tram and not passenger trains.  Passenger demand has more than doubled in the last 25 years.  Finishing our principal mainline railway is urgent to reduce train overcrowding and train congestion at Grand Central Shopping Centre.  However, we will continue to support efforts to reinstate the route for freight traffic and, should future demand justify it, passenger services.  By then, it will be too late and it will be a train-tram-train railway of changes between the two modes to make progress between Worcester, the Black Country and Derby.  Very foolish.

I am so sorry to hear that you are still supporting West Midlands Metro.  This project, since 1981 by the councillors and officers of Centro and now TfWM, has meant that you have all failed to give us the 200 Kms and 15 tram lines that was the aim by the year 2000.  As you were all working so hard on not achieving this goal, you were, at the same time, giving planning permission for everything but the kitchen sink to run down about 100 Kms of mainly urban railway lines that had been so successful for 100 years.

Metro trams are being rolled out to 2026 and costing over £1.5 BILLION!  I oppose them because of the enormous cost to simply replace trains and buses with trams.  Trams are the most costly transport mode to build, after HS2 when you compare construction costs per Km.  As regards the Edgbaston tram extension, this is nearly four times more expensive per Km than the like for like comparison with M6 Toll construction, when it opened in December 2003.  Admittedly, that was 16 years ago, so not a true comparison.  But gives some idea of the shocking costs involved in this decade of austerity.

The Edgbaston tram extension means that we will, always now, have a longer and slower journey by bus into Brum from Stourbridge, Halesowen, and the King's Head.

I think it would still be more sensible to use the £1.5 billion to simply put the regional and intercity trains back to finish the mainline railway.  The money left over to extend the free bus passes for old men like me, to youngsters like yourself.

Does this seem reasonable to you, Cllr Jackie?  Or, am I entirely out of my mind?  I do wonder if it is me who is mad!

Best wishes